Furious Seven

Sat, 04/04/2015 - 22:18 — Bryan Lambert

I am actually new to the Fast and Furious series. I think I watched like 20 minutes of Tokyo Drift on basic cable once. Maybe.

But plans were made to see Furious 7 in the theater, which required me to finally do the thing I'd been thinking about getting around to for a while and get caught up on the series. Well, not the entire series. That would be madness. But Five and Six, generally regarded to be the essential ones. Five was a solid, ridiculous action movie set in a world where activities that, in our world, would not necessarily involve cars, in this world, ALWAYS INVOLVE CARS.

Six was like Five, only it had like fifteen stupid minutes at the beginning and 30 stupid minutes at the end and the middle was only OK.

Furious Seven is stupid, but not in a bad way like the sixth movie. More in a good way like the fifth movie, but a bit more insane. If you've seen the trailers you have a pretty good idea of what to expect, but there's more of it and it's louder. Vroom screech vroom screech punch punch boom repeat. It's a very strange formula they've developed, but it's entertaining.

Oh, and if you're wondering how they dealt with star Paul Walker's death, let's just say it's handled with the movies' trademark subtlety. It is, if you have no real attachment to Paul Walker as an actor or a human being, it's hilarious. Otherwise, it's still pretty funny. If you've seen what passes for emotional beats in any of the previous movies, just take that and crank the schmaltz up to 15.

Should you see it? Well, if you saw the bit in the trailer where they jump a car between two buildings and are interested in seeing how they continue that stunt, because that stunt is just the beginning of the sequence, then yes. Because you will also be interested in most of the rest of the movie.